’Tis the season to be jolly — in spite of the gloom outside and the torrents of rain.
’Tis the season to be jolly — in spite of the gloom outside and the torrents of rain. But how do you banish the winter ghouls, put on a mask of good cheer and go forth beaming into the pre-Christmas crowds? Radio Three has come up with a possible help-all, by launching its Sing Hallelujah! campaign just as the days shorten into dreary half-light. So far the station has signed up almost 350 amateur choirs nationwide who at some time between now and Christmas will be performing Handel’s exhilarating chorus from Messiah. It’s the culmination of the year-long celebration of the composer’s music, marking 250 years since his death in 1759. On Christmas Day there’ll be a broadcast of ENO’s controversial operatic production of the oratorio (see review page 57). So get practising all ye at home who need cheering up, and brush up your Handel. There’s no excuse for not taking part, since even if you don’t already belong to a choir you can download the orchestral backing (and the separate chorus parts) from the Radio Three website and sing along to yourself if you so desire in a place where no one else can hear you.
The station’s quick and easy antidote to the malignancy of the season could be adopted as a government strategy. Singing does not just release all those festering demons, it can also create a real sense of community, bringing people together to make music for free. On Sunday night’s The Choir we were taken up to Oban in the company of our guide, Andrew Robertson, for the Royal National Mod, the festival of the Gaelic language, which has taken place every year since 1892. It’s a week-long gathering of Gaelic speakers, competing with each other for prizes in music and poetry but also revelling in the opportunity to express their commonwealth of words. The singing of these choirs is shaped by the Gaelic language and is quite distinctive, so light of tone and restlessly lilting, as if born out of the rushing wind and rolling mists of the Scottish highlands and islands. ‘Bi Falbh on uineag’, for instance (sung by the prizewinning Dingwall Gaelic Choir), just rippled along in waves of sound determined by those soft-sounding vowels, so different from the roaring majesty of the ‘Hallelujah’.
Back in the studio, Aled Jones spoke with Handel expert Laurence Cummings on the enduring appeal of his music. Why, asked Aled, has the ‘Hallelujah’ become, since its first performance in Dublin in 1742, the best known of all communal choruses? There’s something about Handel’s music, and especially his choral music, ‘which speaks to the human in us all’, says Cummings. It’s the synchronicity, he explained, the merging of all those different voices into a harmonious whole. The singers, as one, take in a breath and then watching closely for the beat give out, as one, that gloriously affirming repetition, ‘Hal-le-lu-jah! Hal-le-lu-jah!’ It’s a moment of pure and joyous harmony, which should cheer even the gloomiest of souls.
Radio Three has also been celebrating the 350th anniversary of the birth in 1659 of Henry Purcell, arguably the greatest of English composers, who was organist and choirmaster at Westminster Abbey until his premature death, aged just 36. On his tomb in the north quire aisle of the Abbey are inscribed the words, ‘great Purcell lives! His spirit haunts these aisles’. He was fortunate enough to be born just as Charles II was about to take the throne and to restore the pageantry and music associated with royal events and religious worship, giving him huge scope to develop the musical liturgy in English.
A palpable sense of his spirit resonated through the Abbey at the concert for St Cecilia’s Day, celebrated on 22 November, which was also broadcast on Radio Three. Purcell was the first English musician to celebrate the life of the early Christian martyr, who is remembered as the patron saint of music because of her courage in continuing to sing right up to the point of death at the hands of her executioner in Rome in 230 AD. The composer instituted an annual concert of new choral music, given in praise of music and in memory of her martyrdom; a tradition that was taken up in the early days of the Third Programme and has been continued ever since. As a child I can remember looking forward to the St Cecilia’s Day concert — Purcell, Handel and the Huddersfield Choral Society — as a potent promise that Advent was on its way.
On this particular night in the Abbey it was as if Purcell’s spirit was haunting the aisles as the choristers and soloists recreated the music that was sung at the funeral of Queen Mary in 1695; music that was heard again a few months later at Purcell’s own funeral, victim of a cold that rapidly turned fatal.
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